The Ripple Effect of Water and the Environment on our Community

We are pretty busy these days resisting the world we don't want, but we also need to focus on building the world we want! The DFL organizes monthly policy panels with experts to help educate the community about pressing issues that need community action. Saturday, April 26th panel was focused on water and the environment.

Thank you to Chris Meyer (Clean Water Council), Shona Langseth and James Rentz (Olmsted County Soil and Water Conservation District) and Tee McClenty (MN350) for giving us insight into the critical programs that protect our water and environment.

Here are some community calls to action from our panelists:

1) Keep the pressure on your representatives to fund crucial federal programs like Medicaid. If these are cut, all other state and county programs will risk loss of funding in order to divert funds to our essential social safety nets (which incidentally also help mitigate the worst impacts of poor water quality and climate change!)

2) Call your representatives and ask them to support SF909/ HF452 and SF1089/ HF1066 which fund critical soil and water conservation initiatives

3) Check out the DNR Geologic Atlas for your county - look at the maps of our region, and read to learn more about the fragility of our ground water. See; https://conservancy.umn.edu/.../506610ad-6949-4876-9e70...

4) Attend Soil and Water Conservation District meetings on the 4th Thursday of each month - or you can read agendas and leave public comment in their web portal: https://www.olmstedcounty.gov/.../soil-and-water... 

5) Help MN350 grow their volunteer base in Rochester! This group has some wonderful climate initiatives that need support. See: https://mn350.org/get-involved/

Also, please consider getting involved with Save the Boundary Waters, which fights to protect our pristine wilderness from commercial pressures such as toxic sulfide-ore copper mining. See: https://www.savetheboundarywaters.org/